what is the story behind the legend of sleepy hollow i mean isthere any truth or origin for this story?
The story is set in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow, around the year 1790It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a priggish schoolmaster from Connecticut, who is scared away from town by Abraham Brom Bones Van Brunt, his rival in love for the hand of eighteen-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of Baltus Van Tassel and a fifth-generation Dutch immigrant herselfThe legend featured in the story is that of the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannon-ball during some nameless battle of the American Revolutionary War and who rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his headThe denouement of the fictional tale is set at the bridge in the real location of the Old Dutch Burying Ground in Sleepy HollowThe characters of Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel may have been based on local residents known to the authorThe character of Katrina is thought to have been based upon Eleanor Van Tassel Brush and her name comes from Eleanor's aunt Catriena Ecker Van TesselThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow follows a tradition of folk tales and poems involving a supernatural wild chase, including Robert Burns's Tam O' Shanter (1790), and Bürger's Der wilde J?ger, translated as The Wild Huntsman (1796).
